Day 338 - Untitled Zombie Story Chapter 4.3 - (1,205 words)

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UNTITLED ZOMBIE STORY

By Wayne Webb

Chapter 4.3

Margaret strode forward and in a smooth, fluid motion she took the gun from his hand and raised her arm as she walked at a steady and deliberately fast pace towards Rusty. She moved in a slight arc away from her son, not wanting to give him the chance to interfere with her hastily made plan.

Rusty saw the look in her eyes as she zeroed in on him, the barrel of the gun not drawing his focus as he might had anticipated. A glint of finality punctuated her expression and it hit home to rusty that this was the end. He stood at the beach staring out to sea, seeing the approaching Tidal Wave and understanding there was no avoiding it. She could not miss at this range, and she was closing every step. She would not miss based on her determination.

Rusty waited for his life to flash before his eyes, while the tension and heat that had built up in his body in the last few minutes had been amplified by the offer of the gun and the approaching angel of retribution and death. Rusty did not know which way the votes had been cast and therefore not know who wanted it that way. He had been raising his hands to fend off or dissuade his executioner, but in the space between blinks he let it all go, his hands fell loosely down and the heat dissipated, a weight that he had not known was there was lifting and he stood up a little straighter, feeling lithe and nimble as he accepted the end of his life as a valid concern.

Margaret was blind, she saw nothing but the target, saw no expression and no movement she just saw how close she wanted to be and closed the distance to that point. When she was within a foot away she pulled the trigger twice and then took another swing around and fired again three more times.

She was breathing heavily and her heart was pounding so loud in her chest that she did not hear the gunshots, she was operating in adrenaline overdrive, beyond anything in the world that existed outside of what she had to do there and then. She stood panting and waited for the roaring of blood in her head to stop and her eyes to focus. She didn't want to look at the blood and the gore, but there was a need to see the job done. She had taken on the responsibility, the thing that she saw as a weakness in her son, the risks he was taking with his life, with all their lives really, and she had to step in.

As a parent would, and should.

Rusty was still standing when her eyes finally made sense of what she was looking at, he was swaying and pale in the face. He looked sick and it was a wonder he could have survived the barrage of five bullets at point blank pacing.

He was not bleeding.

Wait? What? He was not bleeding? Had she missed every shot? How was that possible? Margaret raised the gun and pushed it to his temple, taking the last step between them and pulled the trigger, but now in the cold and no-longer-heightened state of passion she heard the empty chamber click and realized that the gun was empty.

Rusty looked at Ben who was staring at the both of them in wide eyed horror. He had taken the bullets from the gun before making his mind up and had planned on using it as a test in case Rusty turned out to be a little less honorable than he was making out. The idea that he would let someone in the Team have a go as well was an afterthought and he did not think it would happen. In fact he considered it a way to prove the point to Rusty about the way they did things.

This was something else entirely. Who was this woman? A person who looked and sounded like his mother but who had commited to a violent course of action, resolved to do it, took the steps and barreled into it with full force, not hesitating for even a second to carry it out, all in the matter of seconds.

“Jesus Mom? What the Fuck?” Ben's voice shook as did his hands, the tremors and trembling not from fear but sheer shock and surprise.

“Language, Benji.” his mother said in a subdued tone, barely above a whisper.

“What the fuck were you thinking?” Ben took the gun from her hand and this time there was no condemnation of his language or any attempt to mother her way forward.

Rusty was holding his breath the whole time from the first click. He had no time to think or process what was happening, the whole debacle happened too quickly and gave him no time to do anything but react.

The expletives from Ben burst the skin on his tension and the air rushed in and out of him in huge gulps, driven by adrenaline the same as Maragret had been. Though in Rusty's case it was fear not rage that it was fueling. His knees buckled and he fell to the ground, not fainting but unable to support his own weight he crashed down onto the hard ground.

Ben was staring at his mother, trying to see behind the dissociation she was beginning to feel.

She would not meet his gaze and she kept her eyes pointed down at the ground not tracking the weapon as it left her hands.

“What the hell mom?” Ben shook his head and saw there was nothing there that was going to make any sense.

“Derek?” Ben put an arm around his mother's shoulders and steered her to the man he had decided was coming with him. “Put her in the car, please.” He pointed which one and watched them walk over, Margaret operating on autopilot. Derek was opening the back door of the car and Ben shouted out “the front, passenger side!”

Derek looked back at him from the side of the car.

“She gets carsick in the back.”

Derek shrugged and moved her to the front.

“Are you ok?” Ben asked the pale and frightened man and the stare he got in reply was all that he needed.

“Right. So you're good to go wherever you want, you don't need to...”

Rusty did not wait, he bolted like a cat doused in water, his body moving the fastest in the nearest, safest direction he could assume in a split second.

He did not stop running until the people were out of sight and the air in his lungs burned like fire.

The sun was moving overhead and he just stood there hardly daring to believe he was alive. The sound of the cars moving away from the bend where the barricade had been was just reaching him and then he finally let himself go and the grief overwhelmed him.

His body wracked with sobs, making breathing even more painful and the tears streaming down his face made him half blind.

He was alive enough to feel it all.